I made up a quiz about the American Presidents here.
It has 40 questions. In the modern electronic age you can probably look up most or even all of the answers. So what to do about that?
1) The quiz is not for money or credits or anything, so if you ``cheat'' you only cheat yourself.
2) Be honest with yourself and take it in three hours.
3) USE the web and see how long it takes you to finish it. You can make up some way to measure how well you did by combining how many you got right with how long it took.
4) The answers, that I will post later in the week or next week, have lots of other information of interest. So whichever of 1,2,3 you do or something else, read the solutions (even those you got right) and be enlightened.
It is actually titled Prez Trivia Quiz. This might not be accurate.
What is trivia? I think it is knowledge that does not connect to other knowledge and hence is not important. Some of my questions are trivia, and some are not. I give examples of each:
What is the most common middle initial for a president? This is clearly trivia. I don't know the answer and its no on the quiz, but I might put it on the next time I do this, four years from now.
(ADDED LATER: A comment used an AI and gave the wrong answer. However, this encourgaged me t find out the right answer. The website I found is here. The answer is H: William HENRY Harrison, George HERBERT WALKER Bush, William HOWARD Taft, Barach HUSSEIN Obama. Second place is W with three: George WALKER Bush, Ronald WILSON Reagan, and, much to my surprise, President Woodrow Wilson was actually Thomas WOODROW Wilson. There are many initials that appeared twice. Does any of this enlighten me? About presidents no. Finding out why the AI got it wrong would be interesting but perhaps unknowable.)
Five presidents ran again for president four or more years after leaving office. Name them and how thy did. This is not trivia (what word means the opposite of trivia? See later). Since Trump ran four years later and won it is of interest to see what circumstances in the past lead to a former prez (a) running again, and (b) winning.
If you are so inclined you can, for each question on the quiz, say if its trivia or not. YMMV.
I googled "opposite of trivia" and got this informative website (I am not being sarcastic) here.
https://www.thesaurus.com/browse/trivia
ReplyDeleteAntonyms include importance and significance.
Knowing "Five presidents ran again for president four or more years after leaving office." is neither of those things so I would call it trivia.
Agree and Disagree.
DeleteAgree: just rattling off the names is not important or signifance
Diagree: If you THEN look up who lost AND WHY, who won AND WHY you may spot trends in history, and an explanation of why Trump won (This question would have been less interesting four years ago.)
Upshot: I take Trivia to mean that studying the question in more indepth is not interesting. This might be a nonstandard definition of trivia.
The most common middle initial for a U.S. president is H, as used by Harrison, Hayes, Hoover, and Truman.
ReplyDeleteFive presidents ran again four or more years after leaving office:
Van Buren (1848, lost).
Fillmore (1856, lost).
Grant (1880, lost nomination).
Cleveland (1892, won).
Roosevelt (1912, lost).
Cleveland is the only one who won. Attempts after long breaks tend to fail unless circumstances favor a return. The opposite of trivia? "Important matters."
I meant they got the nomination, so Grant does not count. To make it rigorous I made it that they get some electroral votes.
DeleteThanks! I didn't know the most common middle initial, and now I do.
You left Trump off of your list, though perhaps that was implied.
I think that response was chaptgpt generated so uncertain how accurate it is. Did you check? Is it correct!
DeleteSo are we saying it’s only Trump and Cleveland who made it? And are you saying that if we look contextually we will understand when this is possible?
1) Thanks for encouraging me to check on the middle names. Yes, H is the most common. Here is the website I found the information on:
Deletehttps://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/2393:_Presidential_Middle_Names
2) If someone did a careful study of the Cleaveland and Trump campaigns and presidencies it MIGHT give some insights. History is hard-- you can have a good question, and study it, and not really come up with anything. However, you would learn a lot about those presidencies, which would probably be interesting.
OH, while H was the most common, I now see that the names th post (which I am now SURE was an AI) are incorrect. The H-middle name presidents were
DeleteWilliam HENRY Harrison, Hoover, Truma. No Human would do that. If someone misunderstood and thought it was FIRST Name then Harrison would not be on the list. If someone unerstood the questions correctl they would see that the answer is 3/4 wrong.
George HERBERT WALKER Bush
William HOWARD Taft
Barack HUSSEIN Obama
The answer given in the comment above was Harrison, Hayes,